In Memoriam

The Lion’s monthly local newsletter column:

I’m embarrassed. I have nothing to write about this month.

Really.

My little black cat Boo died April 22, peacefully at South Cape vet in Waquoit. I held her while a tranquilizer relaxed her, and then the vet, whom I admire greatly, injected her and she was gone. I wept, and went home to my other cats, who noticed nothing amiss.

But nobody really wants to read about that. It’s just another cat gone.

There’s global warming, or more accurately, catastrophic global climate change that, unchecked by the only species that could do something about it, will end civilization, quite possibly on the scale of the Permian extinction that killed about 90 percent of life on earth. And it likely won’t take so long to do this time. Might even be all over by century’s end.

But most of you don’t want to think about your home underwater and an atmosphere of four percent oxygen and rank with toxic gases. I mean, really, summer’s coming

How about the economy? The government’s put fudges in the figures over the last thirty years, according to Kevin Phillips, who should know. Real unemployment runs between 9 and 12 percent, and inflation between 7 and 10 percent.

But you already knew the government lies to you about that stuff, and about most everything else, so you don’t want to hear it here, right? Of course.

Oil’s heading towards $150 and $200, and the oil states are most likely near or on the downslope of peak oil, so they’re grabbing all the money they can now, and speculators are driving the price even more, and nobody’s getting serious about what to do… (see global warming above).

But here you are paying $3.75 for gas and what, $4.50 for heating oil, so you know about the problem and don’t want to read it here. It’s just aggravating. There’ll be pretty women in bikinis on the beaches soon. What oil crisis?